Welcome to Secret Breakfast / An exclusive newsletter, the best place to get rich by making others cook inedible food with your name on it, because the less you know the hotter you get

Hi there!

The rains are pretty heavy around here, making this summer even more unpredictable.

I hope you’ll have some time for yourself in the coming days, maybe less commuting, and at least less screen time.

If you’re not getting any, you’re lucky: there is a lot of good stuff to read and cook here.

Piero

Photo: a flooded sunflower field after heavy rainfall caused the Krka River to overflow. Photograph: Jure Makovec/AFP/Getty Images

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THE BEST QUOTE

✦ Bertrand Russell, mathematician, philosopher, logician, and expert on people getting hot.

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THE MISSING INGREDIENT

MRBEAST AND THE INEVITABLE
VIRTUAL KITCHEN BURGER SCREW UP

“The YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, more widely known as MrBeast, is suing the company behind his fast food chain MrBeast Burger for making ‘inedible’ food”.

Inedible. More than two years after its debut, MrBeast Burger is finally showing the signs of its original sin: it has never been about food.

Food on a mass scale is risky: if you succeed, it is a good business; but it will never be real food.

They say that McDonald’s business isn’t burgers, but real estate. They say that Starbucks isn’t selling you coffee, but everything else.

MrBeast Burger - a ghost kitchen product sold almost everywhere in the world - has never been about grilled meat and soft buns even if it sold 1 million burgers in three months (it did).

It was about some people - and MrBeast - selling you… MrBeast. Nothing bad here: it is still 20x cheaper than your status symbol smartphone or those H-strapped leather influencer slippers.

People never wanted to eat a MrBeast burger. Did you? Here’s a ★ recipe, I’m pretty sure you won’t cook it.

PS: Wanna talk about honest burgers? Watch this: Why You Can't Make The Best Cheeseburger In NYC At Home.

MrBeast

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THE BOOK

Pack your veg

★★1/2

I really envy salad-people, because they can easily play supper and contain the wrong macros mistakes. Luckily for people like me, vegs are not just salads. We can eat vegetables as main curses because - hey - they were made for that as meat and fish and pasta. This book is a good staple if you need to bring some greens to the table, Ms. Spungen has a killer newsletter, plus Auntie Oprah went wild and published a lot of ideas from the cookbook (★recipes)

VEG Forward by Susan Spungen
→ Shortplot: 🍅 🥬 🍄 🥦

❍ OnlyPans
This is where Secret Breakfast picks juicy content from food creators

Good trick if you like the fruit, but can’t stand the seeds.

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RANDOM ACTS OF HUNGER

This is the space where I share some food (un)related stuff of my week

🍌Watched FastX: Vin Diesel’s family is crazy about Costa Rican Fried Plantains-Plátanos Maduros (★recipe) 🍾 When it comes to keeping the fizz in your champagne bottle size matters 🍔Popeyes New Classic Bacon & Cheese Chicken Sandwich Review 🎃How Spaghetti Squash Squiggled Its Way Onto American Tables 🌭 Everything You Never Knew About Competitive Eating 💔Make the Most of a Breakup Brunch 🥚Susan Makes a Korean Rolled Omelet (★recipe) 🍽️“Life Dinner” Could It Be The Answer To Strengthening Your Relationship ⭐️For you, patient reader, here’s the best link of this issue: Ixta Belfrage new website with recipes like Clam moqueca, Oyster mushroom tacos, Cassava, coconut and passion fruit cake, and more (★recipes)

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FOOD FOR LATER

British Sandwiches and Walking 300km of Wainright’s Coast to Coast
Craig Mod / Ridgeline

Craig Mod’s latest Special Project was about UK, but I just heard sandwiches: “I never want to walk again without a sandwich. It is a perfect walk companion. It is an ideal lunch. It is simple, clean, requires no special tools to consume”.

A Requiem for Diet Soda
Frank Bruni / The New York Times

“Back in high school, I often woke before my parents did, and I could tell when my mother was about to get out of bed. A sound alerted me. I don’t mean an alarm clock. I mean the crunch-woosh of a can of diet soda being opened”.

The Raw, the Cooked and the Hydrolysed
Fred Warren / The Dark Mountain Project

Repeat with me. We have:

• ‘minimally processed’ foods (frozen peas),
• ‘processed culinary ingredients’ (butter),
• ‘processed foods’ (some breads and cheeses)
• and those foods which are ‘ultra-processed’, created by ‘the fractioning of whole foods into substances’ and contain ingredients rarely used in the kitchen, such as ‘high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated or interesterified oils, and hydrolysed proteins’, and additives such as ‘flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers […] and glazing agents.’

Wait: are three stars restaurants’ delicacies just ultra-processed food?

➤ Last week's most clicked link was the one about the secret restaurant chains. And that's all for today.

• SEASON 3 - ISSUE 145 •
Secret Breakfast is a newsletter
by Piero Macchioni

Think of it as The Morning Brew for food people, or just the most unconventional email you'll get today. In two years we have shared more than 2,000 recipes, hundreds of books, and countless hours of news, gluttony, and joy. Download our free ebook about food in 2023.

★★★★★
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